Park Min Gyu is a Korean author that has been recommended to me by several people, independent of one another. After hearing about my novella “Wonjjang and the Madman of Pyongyang,” Stephen Epstein recommended Park’s book 지구 영웅 전설, which I’ll render here sloppily as World Hero Legend or, a little less sloppily, as The Legend of the Earth’s Superheroes, a novel featuring a Korean supe who supposedly sets out to become a superhero and ends up calling himself “Banana-man” and ends up being a kind of gopher or page for American heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman (who sends …
Category: REVIEWS
Ev’rything I’ve Got
I have fond memories of Holly Cole’s dark and seductive version of this song (on Don’t Smoke in Bed), but that’s not online, and I found something even better — in a sense… Truly bizarre: the music is… well, it feels like a cross between a high school marching band and some TV network’s in-house orchestra. And then there’s the video, which looks like it cost a few hundred bucks to put together, plus the (can’t be too much!) wages for the dancers. What is that, some kind of abandoned train yard or something? Vikki Carr definitely ain’t no Ella …
World War Z by Max Brooks
I am, I know, a few years behind most people in reading this novel by Max Brooks, but I picked it up on the recommendation of a friend, Mike. He commented on how he was fascinated by how a disaster — a violent, worldwide epidemic of zombie virus — transformed individuals: how a nobody could become a leader, or a leader (or group of leaders) could persist in folly and be taken down by it. I think that’s the gist of what he said. Well, for me, that was one of a few fascinating things about this book. Another was …
Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book by Gerard Jones
Jewish Geeks, Italian Gangsters, Porn, Businessmen, Comics, Superheroes, Artists, Ghost-Artists, Wives and Girlfriends… and Superman. That, in a nutshell, is what this book deals with. But then, in a nutshell, humans are water, some meat, a little electricity, and dreams. That isn’t the story, and what the story of this book is, is the story of geek culture — its genesis, its struggle to survive, and its eventual triumph. Even if, like me, you’re more familiar with comic book characters through their cinematic adaptations, this book is worth a look. While I’m not a Superman fan, I was not bothered …
이끼 (Moss)
Well, it’s been a while since I saw a Korean film that I couldn’t quite understand with my limited Korean. (Of course some lines go over my head, but I usually get the gist.) This film, on the other hand, frustrated me like mad. I think part of the reason–probably because it’s based on a comic book–is that there is a lot of non-action action. What I mean by that is, there are a lot of sequences that serve the same function as action sequences, but which actually feature characters either standing still or movingly only a little. Frankly, the …
Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Well, it took me almost a decade–due mostly to lack of interest, I’ll admit, since it’s less than 600 pages of text in total–but I finally have finished Asimov’s “Foundation Trilogy.” I know there are more books in the series, but all I ever intended to read was that main, original trilogy. I read the first book in 2002, mainly because it was among the books I’d brought over to Korea, thinking a lack of English-language books would force me to read it. But there were more English books here than I expected, and I’m a slow enough reader that …
War With the Newts by Karel Čapek
Well, it’s been a while but I’m back with a review of a book I recently finished. I don’t know if I’ll manage to review all of the books I’ve read this year — so far, there’s six this month alone, though one of those I’m reviewing for a newspaper– but I quite enjoyed this bizarre novel and so I figured I’d mention it here.I’ve wanted to read the book since 2001 or so, when my friend Jack was reading it, but I only got myself a copy a few years ago and, well, finally I made the time for …
Lost
I’m not sure I can really be counted as a fan of the show Lost… I watched it somewhat obsessively into Season 3, and then during Seasons 4, 5, 6 waited till I could watch everything in one fell swoop or, um, gulp, perhaps. My ex and I used to watch it together, and when I last saw her, she asked me if I’d watched the finale of Season 6; that was when I realized I hadn’t even noticed it starting up again, and the show had finished, and maybe I’d like to check it out. Yet whenever I watched …
Tiny Thought…
So I’m reading this book — for the purposes of reviewing it — and the strange thought hit me: for those who have seen the Korean film 엽기적인 그녀 — known in English as My Sassy Girl, though the English title is meh. (The Korean title, “Yeopgijeogin Geunyeo” is more like, “That Weirdo Girl” or “That Bizarre Girl,” as I understand it. 엽기적인 hjas dictionary entries for “bizarre” and “grotesque” but the phrase is also used for, for example, “pulp fiction” or the Korean name for Mashimaro.) Anyway, the thing I noticed was this: the last word of the title …
Splice — another science-illiterate movie.
If you are worried about spoilers? You need to read this post, so that you don’t spoil your bloody afternoon, the way I did by paying money to watch this crap. Wow, and I thought genetics was a branch of science and industry where people were researching how genetics works, how to design medicines and other technologies based on those discoveries, and hopefully figure out how to regrow organs or limbs, fight aging, combat genetically-heritable illness, and that kind of thing. I mean, yeah, there’s also all kinds of stuff I don’t like in the biotech industry; most people I …